DPS: Call it whatever you like--DPS, damage per second--we just call it DAMAGE, and when it comes to making red bars go down, you can never have enough of it. Don't trivialize it though; damage is a very versatile aspect of combat. There are so many ways that a character can do damage. Let's take a look at a few.

Damage over time. This is the perfect way to apply some heavy damage to an enemy with little time investment upfront. Set an enemy on fire and just wait for the burning to do its magic.

Area of effect. Making one red bar go down is nice, if that's all you can do. We prefer to spread the love among many enemies. That's what AoE spells like Fireball are for.

Projectiles. Some attacks require you to be close to your enemy, while others let you deal damage from afar. Projectiles are somewhere in-between; you shoot an arrow at a target and if it hits, apply the damage.

Let's stop here for a moment and point out how these damage types aren't mutually exclusive in any way. There are projectiles, AoE projectiles, AoE projectiles that apply damage over time, etc. Try shooting a spread of seven arrows through a wall of fire--it works wonders for roasting up a set of attacking monsters or enemy players.There are as many varieties of damage as there are weapons in first person shooters, and then some. We wanted to give you a chance to experience that FPS kind of variety, so we have given each profession different weapons and skill sets that let them do damage in different ways.Heal: Don't belittle the SUPPORT role by calling it heal. Healing is the least dynamic kind of support there is. It is reactive instead of proactive. Healing is for when you are already losing. In Guild Wars 2 we prefer that you support your allies before they take a beating. Sure, there are some healing spells in Guild Wars 2, but they make up a small portion of the support lines that are spread throughout the professions. Other kinds of support include buffs, active defense, and cross-profession combinations.For instance, an elementalist can support his allies by dropping down a ground-targeted healing rain that rejuvenates allies in an area. He might also use Windborne Speed to help them chase down a target or escape out of longbow range. A warrior might shout "On My Target" to help his allies do more damage to a marked enemy, or use his warhorn to "Call to Arms" which improves the armor of his allies for a short time.We use our cross-profession combos to fill in the rest of our support. An elementalist can create a Firewall or Static Field to improve the ranged attacks of his allies. A warrior can carry a Banner of Wisdom around the battlefield to increase the power of his allies' magical attacks. An elementalist might cast an ice spell to freeze enemies, but that same spell might give his allies Frost Armor to protect them from incoming attacks. When you boil it down, support is just the friendly way for players to work together to accomplish a shared goal.Tank: This is where Guild Wars 2 makes the biggest break from the traditional MMO setup. Tanking is the most rudimentary form of the most important combat fundamental, CONTROL. Every game has it, yet it always seems to get a bad name. In Guild Wars there was Knockdown, Interrupt, Weakness, Blind, and Cripple, to name a few. We wanted to build upon what we think makes control such an important part of dynamic combat.Control is the only thing versatile enough to get away from the rock-paper-scissors gameplay of other MMOs. It's healing when you need it, its damage when you need it. It is the glue that holds together our system. From controlling movement to controlling damage, there are tons of exciting dynamic scenarios that control can set up. You can use a stun to save an ally or to finish off a fleeing enemy. Immobilize that warrior to get away from them, or use it on an elementalist to close in on them. In order to use it well, we had to understand the drawbacks of control too. How often can you do it? How excessive is the duration? How does it affect the difficulty of challenges you face?There are a lot of different levels of control, from a simple cripple, to an immobilize, to a knockdown. Each one has its place. The more devastating control effects are, the more infrequently they need to occur, and their duration needs to be shorter. Knockdown is one of the strongest forms of control in Guild Wars 2, but you won't see a character that can just keep knocking someone down indefinitely, and you won't see a knockdown that puts an enemy out for so long that they won't be able to react. It's simply a tool that players have at their disposal to use at the right times to turn the tide of a battle.You could say instead of DPS/heal/tank, we have our own trinity of damage, support, and control, but we prefer to think of them as the variety of elements that create a diverse and dynamic combat system that gives each player a toolbox to work with to solve any encounter we might throw their way. If that sounds like the kind of combat you are interested in, Guild Wars 2 is going to be a great place for you and your friends to fight together for many years to come.

This is a post made by the devs of GW2 during devopment on how they wanted GW2 combat to work. As we know this is not how combat in GW2 takes place. Here is my take on the situation as well as my solution to the problem:

Take note that while I mention the GW2 METAgame my focus here is the core problems with the combat system (which in turn effect the METAgame)

The goal of this topic is to suggest solutions and point out problems these solutions may cause. Also if you belive that there is nothing wrong with the core mechanics of GW2 please state your resoning in reguards to Anets original goals as covered in the above post. This post is for disucsion on the GW2 Trinity and how to fix it, Not weather or not a Trinity should exisit in the first place.

One thing that you didn't mention, but sort of sidestepped into the solution (more moderate-to-low power attacks and less 1-hit-mutilates) is the current uselessness of healing (and therefor healing power) in the current meta. Most healing effects are fields, and it's pretty much always the case that if a damaging effect appears in the healing field, the long-recharge healing field is wasted.

Ok so ye I agree with the video on the most part and if you look at guild wars 1 and its skill system that is a goal I think Anet should strive for. GW1 was amazing skill system because imo you could go get completely nuked by a mob solo in HM without knowing what your doing. You could go back with the right skills, armour and timing of each skill and overcome some amazing scenarios. That's what I would like to see,

PS not enough weapon and utility skills or basic armour skins in game at all! GW2 rocks either way for me....

I think the Southsun Cove dungeon does what he's suggesting very well. You can't just DPS your way through it (at least, my group couldn't) and it made stacking CC and AoE heals very useful. I expected a larger dungeon but that boss encounter was very well done.

Ok so ye I agree with the video on the most part and if you look at guild wars 1 and its skill system that is a goal I think Anet should strive for. GW1 was amazing skill system because imo you could go get completely nuked by a mob solo in HM without knowing what your doing. You could go back with the right skills, armour and timing of each skill and overcome some amazing scenarios. That's what I would like to see,

PS not enough weapon and utility skills or basic armour skins in game at all! GW2 rocks either way for me....

I agree the big thing that made GW1 awesome was their insane skill/dual class system they had. It was fun trying to combine different classes for UW, FoW, and DoA.

Boss fights in Gw1 just seemed a lot less needlessly drawn-out. Either you locked down the Healers and Mesmers in his group... ...or you didn't, and never made any progress, And it became clear right off the bat that you needed to roll with some other tactic. Or like with the "Drought" and the Golem in Vabbi (POX?) for example... You either interrupted or CC'd them... or you got totally Nuked.

I also find it weird how SO MANY game developers and players seem tohave NO ISSUES with giving Bosses immunities to Control.But if you so much as proposed even giving their Lieutenants or summons a skill like: ..&.. & even.. (for anyone not familiar: These shut down DPS-spammers)

...They'd all Laugh at you for making things too difficult for Mr. DPS Mage who only knows how to drop Meteors on crap. I think that's the same reason so many people HATE HATE Anti-Mage and only play L.O.L. b/c of it...

But seriously... it was skills exactly like those that actually kept Fort Aspenwood interesting & balanced when used on key NPC's. I found it really exciting on my MM when I had to chain strips with DeathNovas to try and spike those NPC's with perfect timing. It actually made you have to THINK to win. Anet already did it once. They SOLVED this problem.... Why can't they just do it again and bring back Smarter A.I. while they're at it?

I think the Southsun Cove dungeon does what he's suggesting very well. You can't just DPS your way through it (at least, my group couldn't) and it made stacking CC and AoE heals very useful. I expected a larger dungeon but that boss encounter was very well done.

By design it should... By aplication it does just the friken opposite. After the first sheild the boss becomes IMMUNE to all ♥♥♥♥ing conditions. Soo if you're not running pure DPS you're never going to beat the soft enrage timer. Plus we also had mines randomly exploding when we tried to disarm them.

The encounter might be bugged but when I played it, conditions and everything else worked fine. And does any team really just run full condis? Cos' getting to 25 stacks of bleed and the way condis in general work in PvE makes it really unrewarding to stack condi classes. Maybe just two of them max but 5? Yea, not worth it.

Boss fights in Gw1 just seemed a lot less needlessly drawn-out. Either you locked down the Healers and Mesmers in his group... ...or you didn't, and never made any progress, And it became clear right off the bat that you needed to roll with some other tactic. Or like with the "Drought" and the Golem in Vabbi (POX?) for example... You either interrupted or CC'd them... or you got totally Nuked.

I also find it weird how SO MANY game developers and players seem tohave NO ISSUES with giving Bosses immunities to Control.But if you so much as proposed even giving their Lieutenants or summons a skill like: ..&.. & even.. (for anyone not familiar: These shut down DPS-spammers INSTANTLY)

...They'd all Laugh at you for making things too difficult for Mr. DPS Mage who only knows how to drop Meteors on crap. I think that's the same reason so many people HATE HATE Anti-Mage and only play L.O.L. b/c of it...

But seriously... it was skills exactly like those that actually kept Fort Aspenwood interesting & balanced when used on key NPC's. I found it really exciting on my MM when I had to chain strips with DeathNovas to try and spike those NPC's with perfect timing. It actually made you have to THINK to win. Anet already did it once. They SOLVED this problem.... Why can't they just do it again and bring back Smarter A.I. while they're at it?

I'm going with their focusing that they spread themselves too thin during inital development trying to do too many things at once and all of them coming out half baked.And now all they care about is PvP. Don't believe me? Go check out the offial forums and in the suggestions section find "An option to diable right click targeting." It's been around for 9 months, and until the other day had ONE dev post 6 months old syaing "They'd look into it."Two of the more recent dev post say this:We have not forgotten about this. Sometimes as certain features get used by more of the game, it reveals issues that lead to a redesign. For instance, now that you can right click on people in PvP while spectating to switch follow cameras, accidental right-clicks can be far more disorienting than selecting a new target.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------While the bugged targeting behavior is getting reverted in PvP, our stance on the issue is the same. A lot of us here have similar feelings; I hate losing my target and then warrior greatsword rushing off a cliff! Some features and polish just slip through the cracks and/or we don’t have enough developer time to address every concern. We appreciate all the feedback and I’m sure these issues will be addressed soon

The encounter might be bugged but when I played it, conditions and everything worked fine.

They worked fine for us too until his first imunity sheild. After that nothing.

Okay, got it now...

One thing that you didn't mention, but sort of sidestepped into the solution (more moderate-to-low power attacks and less 1-hit-mutilates) is the current uselessness of healing (and therefor healing power) in the current meta. Most healing effects are fields, and it's pretty much always the case that if a damaging effect appears in the healing field, the long-recharge healing field is wasted.

Isn't that a good thing? Because it encourages control of the enmies to keep the field safe? Or better yet they could more epmhasis on the Cross-Class combos. For example, in PvE (might be too powerful in other game modes) Give a bonus duration/effect to CROSS CLASS combos to engourage their use?All this is going on the fact they actually fix control though, In the current state of PvE combat it's useless.

This is why I always waited atleast a month before I played any of the new content Anet had just added to any chapter of their game. When I didn't... I'd keep ending up in groups like the "Door Glitched" Jotun Path for Arah where we had to use an Exploit to finish it... And When you have to exploit, you're not actually beating the game.

This is why I always waited atleast a month before I played any of the new content Anet had just added to any chapter of their game. When I didn't... I'd keep ending up in groups like the "Door Glitched" Jotun Path for Arah where we had to use an Exploit to finish it... And When you have to exploit, you're not actually beating the game.

The problem with that is that this encounter is part of the living story and will be gone within a week.

Isn't that a good thing? Because it encourages control of the enmies to keep the field safe? Or better yet they could more epmhasis on the Cross-Class combos. For example, in PvE (might be too powerful in other game modes) Give a bonus duration/effect to CROSS CLASS combos to engourage their use?All this is going on the fact they actually fix control though, In the current state of PvE combat it's useless.

Not entirely, since even with defiant removed it's difficult to control against an enemy damaging field that's already been planted over your healing field. Control working would help in that you would actually be able to do things to protect someone trying to heal, but wouldn't fix "they put a 6 second recharge damaging field on my 20 second recharge healing field and completely negated the latter". What I think would help fix this is have skills that allow you to dispel existing fields as well - that's a mechanic that's completely lacking in the game at the moment.

Not entirely, since even with defiant removed it's difficult to control against an enemy damaging field that's already been planted over your healing field. Control working would help in that you would actually be able to do things to protect someone trying to heal, but wouldn't fix "they put a 6 second recharge damaging field on my 20 second recharge healing field and completely negated the latter". What I think would help fix this is have skills that allow you to dispel existing fields as well - that's a mechanic that's completely lacking in the game at the moment.

Hmm, Can't say I ever considerd the ability to remove enemy hostile fileds but it's definty an idea with potential. However I cannot agee with feilds being the primary scource of healing. Have a look here for a list of direct healing skills: http://wiki.guildwar...om/wiki/HealingAlso take note that this page does not include regeneration skills so hee they are too: http://wiki.guildwar...ki/RegenerationThat's an awful lot of potential to get our of your Healing power. And if a bonus for cross class combos was implimented it would become even more useful.It boils down to the problem with the current META that there is not time for healing or conditions (dots anyway) to have much of an effect considering the average lifespan of an opponent.I'd also like to point out I have a bunker ranger with a strong amount of healing power that I believe is an abolsute nightmare to fight in sPvP thanks to combo fileds, I really wish the game put more emphasis on them.

There are a lot in there that have the effect of providing some healing, yes, but most of the heals that are actually reasonably practical for healing someone who needs it fit in two basic categories: things that heal in an area around the user (active use of Resolve, healing shouts, Cleansing Wave, and so on), most of which requite the party to clump up to benefit from... making you and the person you're trying to heal vulnerable to a one-hit area-of-effect kill. Then you have the fields as previously discussed - Geyser, Healing Rain, Super Elixir, engineer and sylvari healing turrets, guardian symbols.

A third category is stuff like Water Blast that heals or grants regeneration to allies near an enemy, but that generally serves more to help someone withstand pressure than to actually be useful in healing someone who's taken a beating - and the DPS-or-GTFO crowd would probably say that it's better to just kill the thing while you still have dodges, blocks and reflects available, and it's hard to say that they're wrong.

I've said this elsewhere, but I don't see the GW1 end game as some amazing template to emulate. Don't complain that we kill GL in 46 seconds, how fast did the speed UWSC guilds beat Dhumm? So yeah, GW1 isn't the best thing to hold as an example of what we want gw2 to be.

What I want: new fractals. Make each level relatively short (10-15 minutes) that have bosses with good mechanics (a mix of guild bounty, molten facility, guild puzzle) and if you have trash mobs, make the pulls interesting and strategically rewarding (like Ascalon fractal) and not tedious (Dredge fractal wagon spawns). Along with this, open 50+ and don't make the agony survivable with any AR except enable 99% trick on Maw (or something). And then fix the rewards: at 50+ stop dropping rings, and replace the rings in the loot table with fractal skins so that they drop at a reasonable rate. Oh and fix the chests so that the loot from a 50+ chest is better than a 1-10 chest. At 50+ you should probably get AT least a core + a rare from a fractal chest with a good chance for a lodestone and a NON ACCOUNT BOUND exotic. Ideally this would be the time/place to introduce Ascended weapons, but obviously they aren't going to introduce ascended weapons without a way for WvWer's or casuals to get them too so that complicates it. Anyway, kinda rambly but that's what I want right now.

If they fix fractals, they could open up a new tier of fractals every other month, and that would give them plenty of progression/content to tide over the hardcore types until a real expansion comes out with all new dungeons.

It's not that we're beating GL in 46 seconds that's the issue here, it's that the optimal way to do pretty much anything is to DPS it to death. Control is near-pointless against nearly all of the top-tier content because of defiant, and most forms of support apart from increasing DPS (which, personally, I actually regard as part of the DPS role rather than the support role - I regard support as 'using skills primarily intended to keep your allies alive') are also pretty much pointless. Thus, instead of the 'soft trinity' talked about in the dev article Kaaboose reposted, we have the Holy Singularity of Damage, Damage And Moar Damaage.

GW1, on the other hand, did have other roles. Permasins were tanks (and far too good for game balance, but that's another discussion), and you had the healers. Now, I'm not saying we should go back to tank'n'spank, but it would be nice to see the three roles actually function rather than damage alone.

More fractals is certainly good, but without some fundamental changes to the structure of the game, it's still going to be all about the DPS.

In my opinion, part of the problem stems from Arenanet inappropriately applying traditional singular boss fights – compounded by limited AI and low skill sets – that are not suited for the combat mechanics they created. So far, from my limited dungeon experience, they are fumbling around trying to find something that works which often leads to certain gimmicks (i.e AC ghost-busting). It just feels like they need to find specific intertwining mechanics where the concepts of support and control are necessary, only not against the boss itself.

The other issue I have is the idea that direct damage scales far too well. Trait dependent, but running a more defensive gear and accessory set-up can still lead to a ~50% critical chance and ~70% critical damage bonus before consumable buffs and fury boons. In my opinion, critical hits and the associated damage should be an exception and not the norm.

In my opinion, part of the problem stems from Arenanet inappropriately applying traditional singular boss fights – compounded by limited AI and low skill sets – that are not suited for the combat mechanics they created. So far, from my limited dungeon experience, they are fumbling around trying to find something that works which often leads to certain gimmicks (i.e AC ghost-busting). It just feels like they need to find specific intertwining mechanics where the concepts of support and control are necessary, only not against the boss itself.

The other issue I have is the idea that direct damage scales far too well. Trait dependent, but running a more defensive gear and accessory set-up can still lead to a ~50% critical chance and ~70% critical damage bonus before consumable buffs and fury boons. In my opinion, critical hits and the associated damage should be an exception and not the norm.

I like being able to have a high crit chance since a lot of traits proc from said crit cahcnes. I know reducing crit dmg on bosses (or at least capping crit dmg on them) would help but it's more of a bandaid soultions. Better ai and an emphasiss on control, as well as better desinged fights should solve the zerker METAgame problem without having to resort to a direct dmg nerf.

GW1, on the other hand, did have other roles. Permasins were tanks (and far too good for game balance, but that's another discussion), and you had the healers. Now, I'm not saying we should go back to tank'n'spank, but it would be nice to see the three roles actually function rather than damage alone.

To be fair, running anything resembling a tank for almost all of the content in the game was just suboptimal.

Guild Wars was more of a frontline, midline, and backline type of trinity. People up front doing damage, people in the mid supporting the damage dealers and debilitating the enemy, and then a couple healers (or protection, which was unique to GW and amazing).

True enough. GW1 really had much the same 'damage, control, support' trinity that they were trying to implement with GW2, except that it was one in which the classical 'tank, heal, DPS' system worked if that was what you wanted to do. Tanking did have its uses in some parts of the game, but it was essentially a form of control, and it certainly wasn't always the best form.

The issue is that dedicated support in GW1 was pretty much necessary, generally including at least one party member who can spike heal - and that pretty much means monk or ritualist. A second support character of some kind was also necessary in most content, albeit with a little more room for variation - a prot monk, imbagon, or communing ritualist could all do quite well, and some of the other professions can provide support as a secondary role. The end result is that nearly everyone needed a monk or ritualist.

The problem in GW2 is, of course, that control and (defensive) support, with a couple of exceptions, are pretty close to not worth having in a lot of situations. Where the happy medium would probably lie would be to make it so that support and control - in some shape or form - are necessary, but where every profession can truly stand up and say "I can do that!" so we don't end up waiting for a healing guardian, ele or engineer to show up before we can do something.

The problem in GW2 is, of course, that control and (defensive) support, with a couple of exceptions, are pretty close to not worth having in a lot of situations. Where the happy medium would probably lie would be to make it so that support and control - in some shape or form - are necessary, but where every profession can truly stand up and say "I can do that!" so we don't end up waiting for a healing guardian, ele or engineer to show up before we can do something.

That's it in a nutshell drazynnic. That's exactly what I want to see in the trinity. People complain that with a trinity system (ie the WoW one) that it will get back to requiring certian classes. Everyclass has acess to inturpts and abilities they can use to force a mob in a particular direction and hinder it's movement so why aren't we seeing encounters encourgaing this?One reason I really was set on ahving mobs having lots of fast weak (but pressuring) attack skills was so that the current meta builds would have a place. They could charge in, Deal a NASTy amount of spike dmg (as oppsed to the consatnt dps they do now) and then be forced to retreat or stun the mob to safely continue.They wouldn't be one shot (At least not by the default attack) but they would not be able to stand there indefitly spamming until the mob fell down. If they wanted, they could use stuns to give them more oppertunities to safley dps but this might be risk if the mob had a particularly nasty attack that would be best to inturpt.There is just so much room for the proposed trinity from anet to work that I'm almost pulling out my hair every time they annouce improvements to PvP/WvW/Living story and just refuse to address the current state of GW2 combat.

I like being able to have a high crit chance since a lot of traits proc from said crit chances. I know reducing crit dmg on bosses (or at least capping crit dmg on them) would help but it's more of a bandaid soultions. Better ai and an emphasiss on control, as well as better desinged fights should solve the zerker METAgame problem without having to resort to a direct dmg nerf.

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying critical chance should be hammered into the ground, a precision-focused build could still attain, say, a 30% critical chance with fury halved to around 10% for a total of ~40%. I also recognise the impact on traits and other ‘on critical’ effects, but many of these have their own in-built probability which could be increased or removed. Hell, Arenanet has already had to adjust for high critical chances by placing an internal cooldown on certain effects (e.g. life-steal consumable if I remember correctly)

I cannot help but feel that unless something is done to reduce direct damage scaling in PvE, anything other than blatant game mechanic gimmicks will be trivialised as DPS ‘nukes’ past them thanks to hard-counters such as dodging and reflection. Furthermore, as a result condition-type damage will continue to be dropped in preference of the former for many professions and while increasing the damage per condition stack is a potential response, it does not strike me as a solution as it only compounds the spiralling DPS issue.

Even a mediocre player like me sees a somewhat limited use for condition damage, a simple example being a ranger which I levelled recently. Ignoring the arguments of whether a ranger is good, bad or downright ugly when compared to other professions, trialling on level 80 rare and masterwork greens left me feeling there was no real build choice as upgrading to direct-damage (i.e. beserker) exotic items yielded a much higher return with the additional damage from condition-stacks being a ‘nice-to-have’.

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying critical chance should be hammered into the ground, a precision-focused build could still attain, say, a 30% critical chance with fury halved to around 10% for a total of ~40%. I also recognise the impact on traits and other ‘on critical’ effects, but many of these have their own in-built probability which could be increased or removed. Hell, Arenanet has already had to adjust for high critical chances by placing an internal cooldown on certain effects (e.g. life-steal consumable if I remember correctly)

I cannot help but feel that unless something is done to reduce direct damage scaling in PvE, anything other than blatant game mechanic gimmicks will be trivialised as DPS ‘nukes’ past them thanks to hard-counters such as dodging and reflection. Furthermore, as a result condition-type damage will continue to be dropped in preference of the former for many professions and while increasing the damage per condition stack is a potential response, it does not strike me as a solution as it only compounds the spiralling DPS issue.

Even a mediocre player like me sees a somewhat limited use for condition damage, a simple example being a ranger which I levelled recently. Ignoring the arguments of whether a ranger is good, bad or downright ugly when compared to other professions, trialling on level 80 rare and masterwork greens left me feeling there was no real build choice as upgrading to direct-damage (i.e. beserker) exotic items yielded a much higher return with the additional damage from condition-stacks being a ‘nice-to-have’.

Anyways, agree to disagree on this point.

Actually after reading your post here I'm leaning more towards your side of the argument. It does seem like a much better idea to keep crit from getting too high and instead buffing the on crit effects to be more powerul to bring them more in line with this change.Also the "Extra chance to crit on X scenario" abilities and the arcane abilities would sudenly be more attractive, especially with the propsed changes to defiance in effect.Yeah I've got to say from a design standpoint, and for the sake of evening out pyshical dmg vs. condition damage it makes a lot of sense.

It's a little odd reading that ANet article belittling classic trinity games and pushing their damage, control, support mechanics, considering that there's likely many trinity games that have far more emphasis on what they call "control" and "support" in them already.

Actually after reading your post here I'm leaning more towards your side of the argument. It does seem like a much better idea to keep crit from getting too high and instead buffing the on crit effects to be more powerul to bring them more in line with this change.Also the "Extra chance to crit on X scenario" abilities and the arcane abilities would sudenly be more attractive, especially with the propsed changes to defiance in effect.Yeah I've got to say from a design standpoint, and for the sake of evening out pyshical dmg vs. condition damage it makes a lot of sense.

That's what I was thinking as well. Most of the on-crit trait/food/sigil effects can be balanced to a lower crit chance simply by increasing the chance of a given crit triggering the crit effect.

There is just so much room for the proposed trinity from anet to work that I'm almost pulling out my hair every time they annouce improvements to PvP/WvW/Living story and just refuse to address the current state of GW2 combat.

You guys can theory BS all you want, but Anet totally has their head in the sand concerning PVE 'balance' and the quality of PVE boss encounters. They first will not admit there is a problem and two, their idea of sprucing up boss fights is to simply throw in gimmicks, like southsuns latest two dungeons, where all of your skills are worthless and all that counts is learning a specific gimmick unique to that instance and punching the buttons in the right sequence like a nice lab rat.

Anet see's PVE as totally for casuals, and thinks that if you want something like skill based combat, you should be doing pvp or wvw, where they are off the hook, and other players provide the quality of the combat content.

Anet see's PVE as totally for casuals, and thinks that if you want something like skill based combat, you should be doing pvp or wvw, where they are off the hook, and other players provide the quality of the combat content.

Perhaps you missed the part where the game IS for casuals? I personally like the way the PVE game is. Don't have to deal with azzhole elitists. You've got pvp and WvW so just leave PVE alone.

I agree, crowd control should do something. It should be as important as dps and support.

Support isnt that bad where it is. What we need are more conditions in PvE and smaller more frequent packets of damage from enemies, mixed in with the big hits. Especially in the "high end" dungeons. It would make support more defense/heal oriented. I dont mind if high level fractals requires someone in clerics gear, as long as any class can fill the role, and it doesnt spill into the more casual areas like living story dungeons. A soft trinity is acceptable. But its also a slippery slope, the closer they veer to support the more imbalanced the classes become, because there will always be one profession that does that one thing better.

But overall, I'm alot more optimistic about the future of GW2, than most players here. They do seem to be listening to us and things are ever so slowly changing for the better every month.

Although I agree with most points in that video, especially in regards to the changes to unshakable and defiant, I doubt Arenanet will improve mob AI or make the "control" role more useful. It's easier and more profitable for them to keep adding new content than it would be to overhaul the current system, which could lead to more backlash (fix something for one group and another group inevitably complains). There's also the fact that so many people not happy with how "difficulty" was handled in GW2 already moved on or went back to another game. Therefore addressing these issues would only appease a minority of the playerbase (at best) and may (at worse) upset other players who were happy with the current system.